Wednesday, 14 November 2012

DON’T OSTRACIZE SINGLE MOTHERS

“We believe that those who find themselves involuntarily
having children should not be rejected and banned from their community. Swaziland Single
Mothers’ Organization (SWASMO) is working hard to ensure that young single
women are considered in Swaziland,” SWASMO said in their annual statement last
week.

SWASMO is a membership-based Swazi NGO that amongst other
things organizes projects and self-help groups that promote self-reliance,
mutual support, mobilisation and education to try and improve the position and
consciousness of single mothers by mobilising and educating poor single mothers
in Swaziland. SWASMO is planning to expand both their outreach and projects.

“The fact is that SWASMO is the only organisation taking
care of young single mothers and their children,” says Project Coordinator and
founder of SWASMO, Beatrice Bitchong. “But we have begun giving talks on the
radio to promote a supportive attitude from parents. We are also planning a
march on the 8th March 2013 with the aim of sensitizing people about the
problems of young single mothers. And we are planning a day care project where
their children could have good meals and be well looked after.”

Church organisations from Canada and the USA have
recently donated materials to SWASMO’s projects. “But we are interested in
other donors who can help Swaziland’s young single mothers. They need it more
than most,” says Beatrice Bitchong.

Women in Swaziland are generally heavily discriminated
against. In Swazi customary law, women in effect have the status of minors and
cannot get a bank loan without the consent of their husbands. Women can also be
fined for wearing trousers by traditional authorities.

But young single mothers are even worse off than other
women in Swaziland. Over a third of all pregnancies in Swaziland are teenage
pregnancies. But teenage mothers receive little or no help from the government,
their families or communities. On the contrary, when they are found to be
pregnant they are often ostracised and stigmatised by their neighbours,
communities and families.

“Swazi single mothers get no support from the government,
they get expelled from their schools, and are rejected by their communities,”
says Beatrice Bitchong. “Some young women even find it difficult to run their
small businesses in their communities because of stigmatisation. People in the
communities also label them as being ‘naughty, lazy, prostitutes’ and if they
are beaten by their boyfriends the community police do little to help them.
Their children are labelled as bastards and looked down upon.”

Swaziland’s conservative and patriarchal culture is thus
used to condone widespread violation of women’s rights in Swaziland, even
though Swaziland has signed the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and Swaziland’s Constitution guarantees
women the right to equal treatment with men – politically, economically and
socially.

Wednesday’s debate in Swaziland’s parliament was a case
in point. Here Swazi senators complained about the criminalization of forced
marriages and opposed the protection of women from stalking.